1 Corinthians 1:1

Apostolic Style and Greeting, 1 Corinthians 1:1-3 .

1. Paul, called to be an apostle See note on Romans 1:1. Neander says, “ Καλειν , to call, is used to denote the way in which God specially appoints men to any particular end.” Not quite correct. It strictly designates only God’s own act of summoning or inviting to an end. It expresses the divine side of calling; but the human side of obedience to the call being implied, the word does, in cases of obedience, presuppose the consequent assignment of the man to the mission. Notes, Romans 1:1; Romans 8:30; 2 Corinthians 8:20.

Will of God And so not an uncalled apostle, through man’s will only, as we shall find in the two epistles that Paul’s opponents at Corinth maintained.

Sosthenes our brother Literally, the brother; so that the great apostle and the humble brother unite in this epistle. And this subordinate cooperation of the brother in this epistolizing is beyond question best explained by supposing that Sosthenes (like Tertius in Romans 16:22, and Sylvanus and Timothy in 1 Thessalonians 1:1) was his amanuensis. And as we find a Corinthian Sosthenes in Acts 18:17, (see note on Acts 18:8,) so what is called in logic the “law of parsimony,” namely, the law that we should not suppose more things than necessary, requires that we should not make more than one Sosthenes where one will suffice. If Sosthenes, the synagogue-ruler of Corinth, became a Christian, he was, doubtless, the proper man to be Paul’s aid, and his fellow-epistolizer to the Corinthians.